For a lot of Sunday comics, some panels are designed to be "throwaway" (i.e., they're not necessary for the main gag) to accommodate papers that use the smaller version.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_comics#Sunday_strip_layout
Other formats for Sunday strips include the half-page, the third of a page, the quarter page, the tabloid page or tab, and the half tab, short for half of a tabloid page. Today, with the ever-shrinking size of Sunday strips, many other smaller formats abound.[8]
Usually, only the largest format is complete, with the other formats dropping or cropping one or more panels. Such "throwaway" panels often contain material that is not vital to the main part of the strip. Most cartoonists fill the first two panels of their strips with a "throwaway gag," knowing that the public may not see them, and making them integral to the plot would likely be wasteful. Exceptions to this rule include Steve Canyon and, until its last few years, On Stage, which are complete only in the third format. An alternative is to have a separate strip, a "topper" (though it may appear at the bottom), so with the topper it comprises a three-tier half-page, and without it comprises a two-tier third-page.
Half-page Sunday strips have at least two different styles. The King Features, the Creators' and the Chicago Tribune syndicates use nine panels (with only one used for the title), while United Features and Universal Press' half-page Sunday strips (most of them use a third-page format instead) use two panels for the title (except for Jim Davis' U.S. Acres—which used the nine-panel format- during the 1980s, when most UFS strips -particularly Davis' more successful Garfield—would have a throwaway gag).
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